


My hero bares my side and sees his heart

by lbmisscharlie



Series: Deaths and Entrances [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Metaphors, Poetry, dylan thomas I love you, violent metaphorical imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-15
Updated: 2011-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short ficlet about love and heroics, based on a Dylan Thomas poem.</p><p>He may claim no heroics and no one would call him selfless, but you’ve known heroes and you’ve known villains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My hero bares my side and sees his heart

**Author's Note:**

> My hero bares his nerves along my wrist  
> That rules from wrist to shoulder,  
> Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost,  
> Leans on my mortal ruler,  
> The proud spine spurning turn and twist.
> 
> And these poor nerves so wired to the skull  
> Ache on the lovelorn paper  
> I hug to love with my unruly scrawl  
> That utters all love hunger  
> And tells the page the empty ill.
> 
> My hero bares my side and sees his heart  
> Tread, like a naked Venus,  
> The beach of flesh, and wind her bloodred plait;  
> Stripping my loin of promise,  
> He promises a secret heat.
> 
> He holds the wire from this box of nerves  
> Praising the mortal error  
> Of birth and death, the two sad knaves of thieves,  
> And the hunger’s emperor;  
> He pulls that chain, the cistern moves.
> 
> -Dylan Thomas

He may claim no heroics and no one would call him selfless, but you’ve known heroes and you’ve known villains.

It’s not, and you’re not, you protest, even though every nerve in your body sings and you know it is and you are. As you spin your stories, it seems every word is alive with the promise of what could be. You wonder if every reader can tell, can read the lovelorn hunger of it all. You hope they can’t – hope he can’t – because he said no heroes and yet. Here you are.

He knows. Of course he knows. With admirable army training, you suppress your senses. But it’s like trying to turn off a magnet and physics will not be denied. The taste of excitement and lust on the back of your tongue, the raw thrill electrifying your nerves, the yearning of your very molecules all conspire against you. When he looks at you, those eyes flay you. You’re sliced up, pinned down, studied, classified, labeled, and somehow – somehow, miraculously – not discarded. Not displayed. Not ignored. Somehow the experiment is over, data logged and conclusions wrought and you still stand and he still looks. And then – and then you see there’s still one more variable.

Pale and crystalline, those eyes cut your flesh, expose your bloodied, beating heart and take it for their own. A kiss and a touch and you realize he’s put his own heart back in your chest. His blood in your veins can be the only explanation because you feel it like fire when he touches you. No more than the ghost of a touch, but those caresses promise a secret heat.

In that cold tiled room, as you feel the wire uncoil, tense and dancing with potential, between hero and villain, feel it pass through you, white-hot and electric, you wonder where he’ll end up. Because he’s both and he’s neither and that little evil in the corner, all wisecracks and Westwood, is not what will determine your fate. For you’re his and he’s your king and you hold each other’s hearts like hidden aces. And death is just one more gamble. You move as one and he pulls the trigger and the whole world tilts.

He may claim no heroics but sometimes he is selfless. You’ve known heroes and, god, you’ve known villains, but he just is. There are fables to be told, myths of men, of great men and good men, and men on the cusp of something beyond. There’s births and there’s deaths, maybe, but most of all there is life. Life, and the hunger for it. Life, and yeah, love. Life and the thrill and the battlefield. There are stories not of fate but of choice and of the sheer, raw humanity of living. So you’ll tell those fables, storyspinner, and ache with the knowledge of their end.  



End file.
